


forty degrees celsius

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25906201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It's not lust people mistake for love most of the time— but rather, loneliness.Tsukishima Kei learns what it's like to be a tsunami that drowns those closest to the shoreline.
Relationships: Suna Rintarou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	forty degrees celsius

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for cigarette smoking.

(He says: _I want to love like this again._ )

Suna turns up at Kei’s doorstep, strawberry shortcake from his favourite cafe in hand. 

“You look like shit.”

Kei rolls his eyes, “Try running a high fever.” 

(He mocks openly, but silently shoves Suna’s words into a mental envelope which he seals with his shames and regrets.) 

Suna only shrugs in response, and makes himself welcome anyway. He peels off his coat and cardigan, leaving it to hang across the arm of Kei’s couch. 

He walks back to where Kei is, stretching an arm forward to place his hand against Kei’s forehead. Suna frowns. Kei’s heart is racing. It should be the fever, but Kei thinks it’s from the sudden contact— it has always been that way. 

His hand is cold against Kei’s skin, having winter’s wrath seep into his body. Kei shivers in response.

“When was your last ibuprofen?” 

Kei’s body trembles again as he feels a gust of cold wind hitting his body through the blanket he has wrapped himself in, and on top of the layers of clothes he’s wearing— “Like an hour ago?” 

Shaking his head, Suna drags him into his bedroom, pushing him down onto the bed. Kei only stares at him bewildered, and Suna ignores it, heading out of the room before he’s back with a tray; a glass of water, one small wet towel, and two tablets of paracetamol placed on it with great care. 

He places the tray on the nightstand, only taking the towel. Suna gently presses it against Kei’s face, before letting it settle on his forehead. He grabs a chair from Kei’s vanity, and sits by his bedside. Kei only looks on with sleepiness resting heavy on his eyelids, resisting its weight as he watches Suna tuck him in within the comforter. 

Suna’s hand hovers over Kei’s head hesitatingly as he sits back down, but he relents to whatever he’s thinking of doing— sighing and ruffling long locks of blonde hair.

He never knows what Suna is thinking. But before he can ponder on it further, the room starts to fade out as grey casts a shadow over Kei’s vision, blurring his sight. His eyes are pleading for him to succumb to rest already. He concedes, and slowly starts to relax into slumber. He lets loose for a moment.

“Thank you, Rin.” 

(To think to yourself, _I miss you,_ but leave it as that. A thought remains a thought. An intention remains an intention.)

: :

(What he doesn’t say: you ask me, _could you pass me the phone?_ )

A sigh. 

“You have to take care of yourself.” 

The calm before the storm. 

“Imagine if we fucked back then. I would have ended up running a high fever too.” 

Kei pretends he doesn’t hear that.

(And it feels like the soft petals of a red rose turned cold, frosted over, till they prick and cut like glass.)

: :

(Say: _I am sorry._ Response: _but the last domino has already fallen._ )

Kei lies on his bed that’s too big for one, too big for just himself, too big because Suna isn’t here. His phone is on his chest, rising and falling along with every breath he takes in and breathes out. 

Long fingers that carry the weight of regrets hover over the call button, hesitant. His body begs him to not hurt himself. He finds that his fingers are jammed; just like how it is after he blocks a harsh blow to save it from falling on his side of the court.

(Tsukishima Kei doesn’t let things fall easily.) 

Kei feels like his life has been caught in a standstill— his mind is full of Suna Rintarou, but his body is empty, deprived. 

He thinks of the way Suna smirks before pulling his zipper down with his teeth, devilish grin widening as his fingers tease a dance over his hips. He thinks of the way Suna’s mouth fits perfectly around him, like two matching puzzle pieces, like how Suna fits perfectly with every curve of Kei’s body _._ He thinks of how his thighs are lonely and longing for Suna’s kisses. He’s always thinking of Suna. 

Kei thinks: _forgive me of this vice, of want from afar._

He forces his finger down. A scorching burn rushes through his face and assaults his chest, heart on fire— it’s funny how he suffers from the heat of the sun even at 2AM. 

_This is Suna Rintarou. Leave me a message and I’ll respond as soon as I can._

(He cannot swim.) 

Kei can feel a small part of himself being scared of opening up to let someone enter his life intimately, wholly, consistently. This part of him is fragile, frantic, fearful, fearful, fearful. His heart gets caught in his throat. Tension always concentrates in his throat— his throat the hotbed of fear. His heart the carrier of fear— a surge, a rise, uprooted and pulled upwards to the throat.

(He drowns in never-love.)

The sound of his voicemail laughs at him, regrets awakening the volcano in his chest. Lava heart douses his cavity with more fire, and it blazes its way through his stomach. It’s hot, it’s hot, and it’s unbearably hot. Kei finds himself throwing up the sun, body plunging into a cold nothingness. 

Coldness. It is a feeling that cannot be hacked off, that will always be here— wounding when aroused.

Clench, tighten, constrict, choke. Movement restricted. Air dense, cold.

(Suna Rintarou doesn’t respond as soon as he can.)

: :

(To let things fester and ferment. To become a tsunami that drowns those closest to the shoreline.)

Suna traces a finger over the hem of Kei’s jawline, and Kei leans in to kiss him gently.

“You’re being unusually soft today,” Kei says in between kisses, and Suna only responds with his tongue, slotting it in between Kei’s lips. Hands roam around pale skin, tracing the outline of toned muscles.

(You reciprocate a kiss instead of leaning in to initiate one.)

Suna always claims to be cold, so why does Kei feel this warmth, this rush of quiet, under the pulse of morning glory, evening sun? The burn of scorch and lingering taste of Lucky Strikes taste right on Kei’s lips, and he takes it all in, wants to breathe, wants to share the tainted air that Suna always puts in his lungs. Hands moving down, he proceeds to undo Suna’s belt. 

It results in a push and pull as their bodies move against each other, both of them panting heavily. He feels cradled by the way Suna is hovering over him, broad and wide, and it’s as if it is specifically made for Kei, so Kei can fit within Suna’s body perfectly. Push and pull, push and pull, push and pull— and it feels like his heart went on a beat-long sabbatical to paradise, and then hell. Always being thrown into the deep end. Nurturing him by crippling him.

(You participate in a moment instead of leaning in to create one.)

But it doesn’t work that way. Kei grows a flower but loses a root, he’s going to wilt at this rate.

: :

(To let things fester and ferment.)

A fog of confusion. Suna and Kei become enmeshed in each other, and the line of distinction becomes thin, and wavers. His flaws become projected onto Kei, Kei onto him, and they warp and warp and warp until this lack of acceptance is directed upon false or misconstrued trajectories; suddenly, these trajectories are messy, all over the place, everywhere, hit and miss— and they hurt everyone.

(To become a tsunami that drowns those closest to the shoreline.)

: :

(He cannot swim. He cuts himself loose— a drifting balloon that floats above the sky where clouds part, but only to make way for sea again.)

Kei cries very hard — angry tears, frustrated tears, _leave me the fuck alone_ tears, _stop demanding so much from me_ tears, _why am I ignored and disrespected when I am trying_ tears. He is tired of being gentle and sympathetic, for trying very hard to be understanding and accommodating.

(To call someone a weight when they’ve always just tried to be an anchor— to step on toes that are forgiving.)

Suna has manifested as dismissiveness, inattentiveness, and unwillingness. It manifests as just not thinking about Kei, or taking the time to actually know him, deeply, intimately, to recognise and realise and literally slowly cultivate a complex understanding of him because really: Tsukishima Kei is a lot. 

He feels like he holds entire worlds inside him sometimes. And he’s not even saying that as a compliment or insult to himself. It feels very matter-of-fact, very honest. A statement, not a value judgment. He is nothing, in the dullest and most dispensable way, and simultaneously too much, in the most self-contradictory and unintelligible manner. It’s an ugly combination. 

(A clearing of space in the sky, only to be filled with water.) 

He is losing more of himself than he is keeping, and Kei knows how this goes: he cries very hard, and he mourns, and he rages, and he gives up, all at the same time. Tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, he will sit at the dining table and find himself silent— he’s aware that he is stuck in a trap of being mad and then going back to his empathetic self. 

: :

(To let things fester and ferment. To become a tsunami that drowns those closest to the shoreline.)

Kei finds Suna next to him; his view is blurry, as though he is looking at him through a veil of tears— soft lashes, a firm mouth, and all the things that don’t belong. And yet something warm always resonates through him and the oscillations of his heart, driven by fear only— because it creates a traitorous rhythm that translates into _he could_. 

This warm something breaks him, eventually.

(Pool to the ground. Collapse. Now crawl. Now sink.)

Now Kei sleeps to this self-censorship, self-silencing, self-retreat, self-breakage, erosion.

He had forgotten how it feels to be entrenched in his own shrinking, sinking bubble— this space that can only bear breath to isolation and negligibility, and an even more diminishing him. There is only sterile, glassy-eyed coldness and a pinching yet indifferent nothingness. He sways not to the pulse and swoon of his never-lover, but the lull of his false haven.

Kei is tired of eggshells and he’s tired of letting himself feel the weight of problems that shouldn’t be implicating him so much— not like this, not when it’s so unwarranted and overwrought. He hates complications and unnecessary treading. He can honestly choose to just let himself sink; he will not be happy but he’s so exhausted anyway that he will be quiet to fall. He’ll be gone before it registers that he was even there.

And it results in him disappearing into a night that has learnt his name. He is safe in his sinking, safe in this warm bed of sleeping alone, safe in what cannot be taken away from him, ripped from him. 

His mind traces this coldness the insides of his being so intimately knows and feels, is so familiar with, so inextricable from. This coldness is a truth that cannot be out-reasoned, cannot be dismantled.

(The heart is never to be found again.) 

: :

(Habits versus desire.) 

The cold of the winter night attempts to dig its places into his bones as they stand outside the convenience store. The pale light from the moon bathes them in shadows on the quiet streets, fountains of smoke spilling from their lips every time they breathe. 

Suna has a cigarette in between his fingers, posture languid against the metal railing that they’re leaning against. Two packets of strawberry milk stand precariously beside them. Kei watches the trail of cigarette smoke twirling upwards to join their frozen breath, before Suna brings his fingers up to take another puff, and both kinds of breath are now intertwined heavily with each other. 

Kei raises a brow, “You should really quit.”

“Can’t. It’s routine. Nicotine addiction and all that.” 

He snorts in disbelief, and Suna shoots him a glare. Kei only shrugs, and he ends up softening his gaze, sighing into the quiet, chilly street. It’s some time close to 2AM, a time when the city is toppling on the edge of sleep, but still brimming with the day’s leftover adrenaline. 

(It is a 10 minute scroll instead of a 10 minute stroll.)

There’s the sound of a notification ring, and Suna soon becomes preoccupied with his phone. Kei knows the night is coming to an end. The wind blows a gust of cold air, and he puts his hands in his pocket, trying to get some semblance of warmth. His hands only get icier by the minute. He hopes that at least his freezing hands and warm heart make up the light at the end of the tunnel that ignites even the black hole he has been trapped in by Suna’s pull of gravity.

He remembers sunrises and sunsets, snowfall and rain, scorching sun and chilling breezes, but most of all what’s really imprinted in his head is the way Suna looks at him, face flushed, lips parted, shaky breath, skin melting into each other with passionate heat. Snowflakes start to fall, and instinctively Kei’s hands reach out to catch them—

But he realises there are just some things you cannot break the fall for. 

(And so the last domino finally falls.)

Kei feels an anxious energy within him, fidgeting as he thinks of ways to end the night properly. He never knows how to. Staring at the glow at the end of Suna’s cigarette, Kei decides that he wants that fire for himself, wants Suna’s lips on his for himself. 

“Shall we meet in three days?” 

“Can’t seem to get enough, huh?” Suna leers as he looks Kei in the eyes, startling the blonde. He chuckles, and then looks back down at his phone, and Kei sees that he’s opening his training schedule. 

And to answer his question— he cannot get enough of Suna Rintarou.

“Okay.”

(It is a _sure, I’m free_ instead of a _hey, let’s_. To act upon instruction instead of contemplation.)

: :

(To let things fester and ferment. To become a tsunami that drowns those closest to the shoreline.)

_Some days I almost love you._

(He breathes in underwater.)

Kei realises, it's not lust people mistake for love most of the time— but rather, loneliness.

: :

(Maybe that’s why they have always been torn in eliminating toxicities. _Habits, you know?_ They cling on.)

Kei finds himself awake at 7AM, when the city is toppling on the edge of awakeness, but still brimming with the night’s leftover drowsiness. He brings his fingers up to his mouth as he takes a deep breath, letting the nicotine overwhelm his system. He almost doubles over from the puff, relishing the light-headedness he receives. Sitting on his balcony, he stares at his — Suna’s — ashtray, pile of cigarette ash haphazardly collecting together, waiting for the wind to bring about a mess. 

(To not care is to numb. To numb is to not care.)

He had reached for the stars and floated so high he lost sight of the earth, neglecting to give thanks and give back to the earth, his home, this haven, this callback, this grounding, the womb within which lovers cradle and kiss him. He finds that he doesn’t feel anymore, save for the slight burn in his lungs and the rawness in his throat. He takes another puff before stubbing it out. Kei comes crashing down again, and so he lights his fourth cigarette of the morning. 

Nicotine flows in his blood and the excess adrenaline brings his thoughts to rest on a floating cloud— _does ‘see you’ hold the same meaning for you as it does for me?_

If they were clouds perhaps they could be kissing, but perhaps it will hurt endlessly, barreling into each other and running into the sun they cannot surmount. 

(He, too, has a part to play: _I cannot swim_.)

: :

(To let things fester and ferment.)

Kei cradles Suna’s face in his hands, palms a perfect fit for his face as he tilts a little bit, angling himself better, just so he can really have a taste of the caverns of his mouth. The way the moon is shining and the glimmer of neon lights from the windows leaves a contrast from the shadows and the dip of Suna’s collarbones that is peeking out of his t-shirt seem so much deeper and Kei wants to take it off, wants to kiss it, run his tongue in the space.

As they pull away for breath, he sees the fire in Suna’s eyes that could destroy forests if he tried and Kei wants to scribble equations on his skin before they continue, hoping their weight would one day be carved into his heart. They fall back onto the bed, the shape of their bodies imprinted on the mattress and duvets. 

At least for now, it’s carved onto Kei’s bed.

Suna’s breaths threateningly linger over Kei’s lips, and he looks into emerald eyes, still unable to comprehend how can Suna make him want to punch the smug grin off his face but also kiss the fuck out of him afterwards. Kei leans in further, almost leaving no space in between them, but Suna raises a finger and puts it in between their lips. He’s breathing in and out heavily, seething with tension as he bites out a reluctant ‘go ahead’. 

Suna simply hums, and that fucking smirk of Suna's appears again when Kei takes his finger into his mouth, sucking it slowly as if he’s challenging Suna, teasing and taunting him with every lick over the skin and joints of his finger. 

Hands roam all over warm skin, nails lightly scraping against it. Suna traces a finger on the inside of Kei’s thighs, dragging it up towards his groin area. He hooks a finger around the waistband of Kei’s boxers, pulling it and letting it snap back. Suna brings his hand back down, caressing Kei’s thigh, ghosting his fingers across quivering thighs teasingly. 

And as Kei lies underneath him waiting, anticipating, expecting, Suna denies him, and continues peppering kisses all over his hips. Kei shudders from the contact, electricity shooting through his body. He looks up to meet Kei’s eyes, an unfamiliar softness in his irises but yet it pleads with Suna to destroy and wreck and ruin. Kei unravels himself beneath Suna, revealing himself, naked and vulnerable and so soft that Suna is afraid that if he pokes him with his fingertips it may just as well leave a dent and an imprint. The bruises of passion on his skin proves him so but he thinks that Kei is still so goddamn beautiful after stripping himself bare, skin-sheath nude and revealing to him the most intimate part of his being. There is a moment of poignancy for Kei as he remembers that Suna is still human beneath the coy glint in his emerald eyes and the sleazy smile that’s fixed on his face. Cupping his face as he guides the both of them to the edge, he drinks in the sight of Suna moaning and panting, wanting more, begging for more. There’s just something about Suna that Kei wants to tear down, wants to taint, wants to desecrate. 

Maybe Suna feels likewise with Kei, because as they reach their climax together, Kei thinks that he’s coming undone too. The way he’s wrapped around Suna’s finger, wanting to do things together with him and to him as he burns the image of a sated Suna in his brain, raw and naked and absolutely beautiful. 

(To become a tsunami that drowns those closest to the shoreline.)

: :

(Kei cannot swim. His loves teach him how to, one stroke at a time.) 

Akiteru had once told him to build trust slowly, carefully, patiently; like allowing a scab to form fully so it won’t leave a scar. He shouldn’t rush into ripping it off just because he is scared of how ugly it looks at the moment. The process is gradual— necessarily. Be wise and unafraid to implement pragmatic solutions, to counter the impulsivity of attachment.

Kei had laughed in Akiteru’s face. He thought he had it under control— he thought wrong.

How did he go through all that he went through and still invalidate himself, and still shrug off — with nonchalance — the severity of everything, the excruciating, endless, fevered, ablaze, new depths of pain, experienced nothing but pain in its rawest form that nothing ‘pain’ as a word will ever be able to capture and convey; the subjective nature of pain necessitates that it is entirely private and personal and intimate and isolated.

How the fuck does he still downplay himself?

“I’m sorry, Akiteru. You were right.”

But his brother embraces him nevertheless— “Love is always here, Kei. Tadashi, Karasuno, me.” 

: :

(And once again he finds that he cannot swim. He will always be in this fold, this _water-in-my-lungs_. He will cramp up. Sink.)

Kei finds himself treading the shoreline, movement inwards. His feet find sand. Wet sand, but with calves wet, it’s just sand, like firm earth, fish so small they don’t exist. His cheeks are wet, warm with wetness and having flesh-ed out skin, ripped too raw, ripped to regret. 

Regrets. 

He is sorry for talking, sorry for this blabber, sorry for this— _Why am I still talking? Is this a movement away?_ _It shouldn’t matter and I don’t want it to matter. But here I am, so loud and overripe and therefore, inevitably, so small I don't exist._

The moon calls the ocean to move toward it: come here. In the daylight he finds that he can see fish fatter than his thighs, slicking around his nakedness. He finds that he can stand. He finds that where he cannot stand.

He remembers that he knows how to swim. He closes his eyes and let silence and sound swallow him and keep him safe, safe in this surrounded solitude, safe in this warm bed of floating and fondness. 

_What is this opening?_

— Of heart and recent memory and chance. He feels his chest loosen to take a lullaby in. He remembers his childhood of just yesterday. Now he is rocking to a reverie he recognises and recalls and wants to collect, recollect, gather like seashells, gathering home.

Where Suna is waiting.

And in the mornings they would share a bed, his alarm would sound and Rintarou would wake up and scramble to turn it off before Kei stirs awake, so he could have a while more in bed, in rest. Then, after a while, Rintarou would run his fingers along Kei’s forehead or press his palm to his cheek— so he could wake up to a gentle, eased awakening instead of that obnoxious pinball alarm blare. _Time to get up_ , Rintarou would say softly. _Or do you want a few more minutes._

Kei would protest, grunt— sometimes dazed, sometimes tired, sometimes playful. Rintarou would laugh. Gentle sweetness. Easing him fondly between slumber and wake. He’d lie there with him for a while, taking care not to fidget too much lest Kei feels the movement through the mattress and sheets. Rintarou would watch his sleeping peace, this stillness, his gaze drifting between Kei and the window and his ceiling and the photos of their loved ones pinned on their bulletin.

Breathing the morning in. or the afternoon. Breathing the moment in.

After a while, Rintarou would repeat the ritual of rousing Kei softly, lightly, lovingly, warmly. So he’d wake up to this tenderness, start his day to this tenderness.  
  
  


Kei wakes up to a pool of sweat, tears, maybe. He can no longer tell the difference. It’s just water. Crawling back into his own nest of a duvet and pillows, he deals with the sea that has pooled within him, loneliness weighing heavy.

He checks his temperature: forty degrees celsius. 

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/seidouus)!


End file.
